By Ellipses
A couple of weeks ago, I thoroughly demolished the notion that Canadians are coming to the US en masse for health care. Using the same powers of mathematicking, I will today take on the second rail of conservative anti-health care reform: "Like OMG! America has TOTALLY the best health care in the UNIVERSE, bitches!"
This will get really boring and "numbery," so I will state the conclusion up front and then pick up back at the beginning (kinda like "Memento" but without the tattoos)...
Conclusion: "INCORRECTAMUNDO!"
I chose a relatively random selection of countries: Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Spain, Sweden, and The United States of America. How did I select these? I scrolled through an alphabetical list and picked places that seem relatively civilized. Then I added Israel because conservatives are completely gay for Israel. Then I added the US because, well, that's the point of this post.
Next, I picked diseases that I could get data on that would be consistently methodologicalized across that spread of countries. I did NOT cherry-pick diseases that cast America in a bad light... in fact, I picked the diseases before I had the data regarding the performance of each country in the category. For all I knew at the time, America would be W00t and the rest of the world would be Suxorz.
Finally, I put the lime in the coconut, spun around three times, and wiped Larry David's piss off of Jesus' chin.
Before we look at diseases on a case-by-case basis, I want to just lob a data grenade toward Sean Hannity, who is convinced that if we have evil socialized medicine in America, then all the doctors are going to quit and become plumbers or cashiers or something like that.
Medical Doctors per 1,000 People
Finland 2.6
France 3.4
Germany 3.4
Israel 3.8<------------- First!
Spain 3.2
Sweden 3.3
United States 2.3<-----------Not first! (nor 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th)
And now for a second auxiliary point... dental care for children. I would posit that a family that does not have regular health insurance is probably not getting routine dental care. For those "slippery slope" folks who think that socialized dental care would be a frivolous act of overt Stalinism, I would point to the causal relationship between gum disease and bacterial induced heart disease. Dental health is an indicator of overall health and early detection of oral health problems prevents extremely expensive cardio-thoracic, emergency care. So, how do we do when it comes to our mouths?
Number of Bad Teeth Per Child
Finland 1.2
France 1.2
Germany 0.7<-----------First!
Israel 1.66
Spain 1.12
Sweden 1
United States 1.19<---------- Not First! (not last, either, so... yay?)
Ok, how about we look at behavior-related diseases. HIV is primarily transmitted through a behavior (sex). So, how do those bad, liberal, socialist countries do compared to us on sexual health, specifically, HIV among 15-49 year olds?
% of 15-49 year olds infected with HIV
Finland 0.07
France 0.35
Germany 0.11
Israel 0.11
Spain 0.46
Sweden 0.07
United States 0.64<---------- Last again... damnit already!
Ok, so I hear a lot about how the US does better with breast cancer than Canada or England. Too bad Canada and England aren't on my list. Let's see how we do on breast cancer among our sample countries:
Breast Cancer Deaths/100,000 Women
Finland 15
France 18
Germany 19
Israel 22
Spain 15
Sweden 15
United States 17<---------- 4th place...
Good news is, 4th place gets a ribbon... Bad news is, the ribbon is pink, and it's because your mom's dead of breast cancer.
Let's go downtown to Cervixville:
Cervical Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Women
Finland 0.86
France 1.4
Germany 2.2
Israel 1.5
Spain 1.5
Sweden 1.9
United States 1.9<---- Fuck! Tied for second to last place!
In all fairness, though, only 1 in 8 Finnish women actually HAVE a cervix. Little-known fact.
Maybe we'd have more luck 'round back:
Colon Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Men
Finland 11
France 15
Germany 19
Israel 17
Spain 18
Sweden 13
United States 13<----------- Tied for SECOND PLACE! I feel like I'm cheering for the slow kid just because he fouled one off! "Good contact Sparky!" While I'm thinking "stick to the drama club."
And with the girl's butts?
Colon Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Women
Finland 7.3
France 8.8
Germany 11
Israel 12
Spain 9.7
Sweden 9.9
United States 9.2<---- we slipped... France AND Finland are kicking our cancer-ridden asses
Ok... Liver cancer. We HAVE to beat Germany and France on this one!
Liver Cancer Deaths per 100,000 Men
Finland 4.5
France 10
Germany 4.9
Israel 4.1
Spain 7.9
Sweden 4
United States 4.6<--------- 4th place :-/
Liver Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Women
Finland 2.2
France 2.3
Germany 1.8
Israel 2.1
Spain 2.7
Sweden 2
United States 1.8<------------- Holy Cirrhosis Batman! Tied for FIRST! It's about damn time.
Alright, let's keep the addiction-related ailments train going! Next up: Lung Cancer
Lung Cancer Deaths per 100,000 Men
Finland 31
France 44
Germany 40
Israel 28
Spain 45
Sweden 20
United States 44<------ Tied with goddamn France for second to last? Shit.
Lung Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Women
Finland 8.1
France 8.2
Germany 11
Israel 9.1
Spain 5.1
Sweden 14
United States 26<---------- WTF?
Side rant for a moment... In the United States, smoking is an activity that is enjoyed disproportionately by people with lower incomes and lower levels of education. People who are MOST likely to forgo routine health care due to the expense of the care or the inability to obtain insurance. It comes as no surprise that a demographic segment that overindexes in propensity to smoke as well as propensity to NOT have health insurance or receive routine care would show high levels of death resulting from a smoking-related disease.
Alright, back up the ass:
Prostate Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Men
Finland 18
France 14
Germany 15
Israel 9
Spain 12
Sweden 20
United States 12<---------- another second place finish! Good contact, Sparky!
We have to find SOMETHING that we are good at... How about... stomach cancer?
Stomach Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Men
Finland 6.8
France 5.9
Germany 9
Israel 7.7
Spain 9.5
Sweden 5.4
United States 3.4<--------- Suck it, Finland!
Stomach Cancer Deaths Per 100,000 Women
Finland 4.1
France 2.3
Germany 4.7
Israel 4.5
Spain 4
Sweden 2.8
United States 1.7<----------------- in your MOUTH, France!
Not to piss on your gold medal in Special Olympics Bowling... but on average, a woman is 30 times more likely to get breast cancer than stomach cancer. A man is 18 times more likely to get prostate cancer than stomach cancer. The combined male + female likelihood of getting lung cancer is 50 times the male+female liklihood of getting stomach cancer. So, it's kinda like bragging that the US has the fewest number of soccer injuries...
However, if you are an alcoholic woman who doesn't smoke and has had the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine (decreased risk of Cervical Cancer), then there is no country on earth where you'd rather get liver cancer! Except Germany, maybe. Go to Iconoclast, Part Trois Sphere: Related Content
7 comments:
Sir Isaac Eliptinewton…you have proven yourself to be the master of picking the white out of chickenshit. Public math is dangerous and if you want to be taken seriously you need to source where you came up with such detailed data. And for these numbers to mean anything you need to note the statistical error, significance and sample sizes. Having a 1/3 doctor or a 19% bad tooth is a ridiculous concept and the differences may not be statistically significant if you look at the numbers behind the numbers. (I think I went to that 1/3 doctor once.)
Why did you leave out UK or Canada or any other country for that matter? Just pulling countries out of your ass to support your argument is like everything else that you pull out of your ass every day. Stinky and TMI.
And last, you conveniently leave out what the European socialists you chose as examples have to pay for this health care. I don’t see Americans headed to these countries for their health care but I do see the whole world coming here when and if they can.
When you use "per 1,000" population data to generate a mean number of doctors, you get fractions. If you have 50,000 people and you have 18 doctors among them, then that population generates .36 doctors per thousand people. Come on, now... I'm sure you are better at math than that.
Second, there isn't probability applied to the numbers. It's number of cases per x people. Therefore, you don't need a margin of error, because you are recording post facto. If a country has 1,000,000 people and 275 of them die of Horse Rape, then the rate of horse rape death in that country is 27.5 per 100,000. There is no margin of error, that's what it was.
I left out the UK and Canada because they are a tired aspect of the argument. Every health care argument is all about Canada and England and how England puts babies on spikes and Canada puts AIDS in their drinking water. What's wrong with the sample I picked? Oh, that's right... they are better than us. That's what's wrong with them.
Your last paragraph was very clearly discounted in the first Iconoclast post. Go back and re-read it, it's linked to in the beginning of this one.
Like said, these are ass extracted numbers. I was attempting humor with the old fraction of a tooth joke. Ba Dump Da.
The point is that it is customary when you make an argument like this with numbers that you provide a statistical significance. What's your source?
To some people the difference in these numbers probably does not seemm like a lot to get your panties in a wad over. They all seem pretty close.
More importantly, figures lie and liars figure. This is such a side road argument. If we don't want to be run over by the health care car then why do we care which car has the best paint job? A lot of these numbers will not change anyway because they are caused by life styles and other factors you are not considering such as undocumented democrats (illegal aliens) with poor health, or homegeneity of the population etc etc etc. The number of doctors will not improve over night and in the long run it will probably get worse if the government takes over health care.
I will provide sources tonight...
And yes, a lot of the numbers are pretty close... which begs the question, why are we spending twice as much money for marginally worse results?
"A lot of these numbers will not change anyway because they are caused by life styles and other factors you are not considering such as undocumented democrats (illegal aliens) with poor health, or homegeneity of the population etc etc etc."
Do you have a source for that? What impact do illegals have on the average cost of health care in America?
"The number of doctors will not improve over night and in the long run it will probably get worse if the government takes over health care."
Why would it get worse? France has socialized medicine and they have more doctors... What reason would we have to assume that if we adopted a system MORE like France, that our doctor density would move in the opposite direction? Certainly, there is replicable and verifiable data to predict that dissonant outcome?
It's like when people say that it will cost more to have socialized health care... it costs less EVERYWHERE else... so why would we be the exception to the rule?
Sorry I didn't get your joke :-)
I thought you were using teabagger math
We can stipulate your sources. I am sure you found those numbers somewhere and they seem reasonable. It’s just that when you go to support your arguments with statistics (I am assuming these are statistics and they did not survey every citizen…or the we are back to my 1/3 doctor joke) you can’t just pick the countries that are “better than us” or just the ones that are “worse than us.” If you don’t have any discipline about which countries you chose then your argument is not scientific and it’s just emotional.
What everyone seems to forget is that we spend more money on health because we have more money. As the quality of life has improved people spend more money. I can not prove or disprove it but I would suggest that the reason increased spending on health care has yielded about the same results is because people are jamming more ¼ pounder anus beef burgers and supersizing it. America has been swallowed by fat people and average health has declined so that has increased what we have to pay to get the same health results.
I do not have a source for the well known fact that we have 12-17 million undocumented democrats in the country. But it seems only reasonable to assume that since they come from very poor places with no health care, that the averages on all those numbers you have picked will be decremented. They certainly have affected the average male height figures.
The number of doctors will decline when it is no longer a profession where you can earn big money and when you are told by the government which line of medicine you can go into. And everyone of those countries has a anemic birth rate and they produce more doctors.
It is a myth that socialized health care costs less everywhere. Those countries are going bankrupt and starting to roll back to some private health care in some cases.
"you can’t just pick the countries that are “better than us” or just the ones that are “worse than us.”"
I didn't. I went through an alphabetized list and picked countries that I expected would have comparable data. I did this BEFORE I pulled the data, so I didn't know how the US would fare when I picked the other countries.
"it’s just emotional"
There is nothing emotional about static data. It just is.
"What everyone seems to forget is that we spend more money on health because we have more money."
And we spend less on food because... why?
"I can not prove or disprove it but I would suggest that the reason increased spending on health care has yielded about the same results is because people are jamming more ¼ pounder anus beef burgers and supersizing it."
Well, it would appear that the market is socializing the cost of health care, then. I don't eat that shit. But nowhere on my health insurance enrollment form does it ask me how often I eat horse shit from the clown store.
Blue cross isn't offering me health insurance for 200 bucks a month because of my healthy lifestyle.
"I do not have a source for the well known fact that we have 12-17 million undocumented democrats in the country. "
Perhaps Amphikalein can reproduce the link to the study that shows illegal immigrants are far less likely to utilize emergency health care services than "real" americans... The point is... illegal aliens do not have an appreciable impact on the cost of health care in the US. I live in Washington, Pennsylvania... I haven't seen a Mexican for 8 months. Illegal aliens are not the reason aspirin at washington hospital is 8 bucks a pill.
"The number of doctors will decline when it is no longer a profession where you can earn big money and when you are told by the government which line of medicine you can go into."
Prove it. I showed you numbers that show that socialist france has more doctors per capita than America. If we become MORE socialist on health care, why will the numbers be different for us?
"It is a myth that socialized health care costs less everywhere."
Please make a mathematical argument in favor of this assertion. Show me how you rationalize that 15% of GDP is LESS than 11% of GDP. Show me the universe where 6,347 dollars (per person expenditure on health care) is LESS than 3,406 dollars.
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